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AUGUST, 1926 )
THE TATTVA PRAKASA
181
THE TATTVA PRAKASA.
(Of King Sri Bhojadeva.) TRANSLATED BY THE Rev. E. P. JANVIER, M.A., FATEHGARA, WITH A 'FOREWORD BY DR. J. N. FARQUHAR.
Foreword. The early history of the great Saiva sects is far from clear. The two chapters in the Sarvadarsanasangraha, called respectively Nakulisa Pasupata and Saiva Darsana, give us sketches of the teaching of two contrasted schools.
In the later books belonging to the type of the Saiva Darsana there are statements to the effect that the former type was revealed by Rudra, the latter by Siva : see Bhandarkar, Vaishnavism, Saivism, etc., 126-7; 16) and it is quite clear that the two groups of sects differ largely from each other both in teacning and practice. In my Outline of the Religious Literature of India, I have ventured to distinguish the groups as Pabupata Saivas and Agamic Saivas, because the teaching of the latter group rests finally on the Agamas, while the former goes back, as Madhava shéws us, at least to the tinie of the formation of the Lakulisa Pasupata sect, which appeared long before the Agamas were written.
In Madhava's eesay, Saiva Darsana, a good many of the ancient books are mentioned, especially the following Agamas, Mrigendra, Paushkara, Karana, Kalottara, Kirana and Saurabheya, and two works of which I know nothing, the Bahudaivatya and the Tattva Sangraha. Several ancient scholars are also mentioned, the Siddh Guru, Aghora Siva Acharya, Rama Kantha, Soma Sambhu and Narayana Kantha ; but they also seem to be otherwise unknown. But there are three quotations from a treatise called Tattva Prakasa and one from Bhojaraja; and it now turns out tbat Bhojaraja, king of Malwa, who reigned at Dhara, 1018-1060 A.D., is the author of the Tattva Prakasa. The text has been found, and is published in the Trivandrum Sanskrit Series, and all four quotations occur in it, I. 6, 7, 13, 17, and also a fifth passage which is referred to, I. 8-10.
It is clear that several sects come under the general category of Agamic Saivas, notably the Vira Saivas and the Tamil Saiva Siddhanta. Cowell and Gough, in their translation of the Sarvadarsanasangraha, take it for granted toat the system described as the Saiva Darsana is identical with the system of the Tamil Saiva school ; but whether the system is identical or not, it is clear there were two distinct groups, one scattered all over India whose literature was in Sanskrit, the other found only in the South, its literature all in Tamil. It also seems probable that the earliest books of the Sanskrit literature were written several centuries before the earliest books of the Tamil dogmatic began to appear.
I should therefore be inclined to conjecture that the earliest books of the Saiva Darsana were written by the Siddha Guru and other leaders at early dates, say between 500 and 1000 A.D., and that the Tattva-prakasa, written probably between 1030 and 1050 A.D., proved one of the simplest and clearest manuals of the sect, so that it was well fitted for quotation in a brief essay such as Madhava's is; and that the later books, including Srikantha Sivacharya's Bhashya, which are discussed by Bhandarkar, are the continuation of the same movement. It is probable that the people who professed the system were mainly Smartas : that is clearly true of Bhojadev.; and the few families which, to my knowledge, still profess the system in the South are Smartas resident in the Tanjore and Tinnevelly districts. It is possible that careful inquiry might discover others in North India who still cherish the old literature.
The Tamil Saiva Siddhanta rests primarily on the Tamil hymns of the great early singers, and the sect is a popular one, with many adherents among the common people all over the South. It is probable that the Tamil dogmatic was produced partly under the stimulus of the Sanskrit books. Yet it is also probable that the two eystems differ in a number of details : the Vedantic standpoint of the Sanskrit system is certainly Visishtadvaita, while the Tamil Saiva standpoint is called Sivadvaita;
